Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to raise this issue, in co-operation with my constituency colleague, Deputy O'Keeffe. I was the Minister of State who turned the sod for the two schools in question in 2015. These are multimillion euro projects to deliver, in the instance of St. Colman's community college in Middleton, for 1,000 students and, in the instance of Coláiste an Chraoibhín in Fermoy, for 800 students. The parents, staff and students, who are the most important people in all this, received correspondence last week from Cork Education and Training Board to state it had decided to terminate the contract with Sammon for the building of the extensions. This is a very serious matter and it is causing a great degree of worry because the ETB is stating it will put in place additional accommodation for September 2018 if necessary. Our reason for raising this issue here today is to seek to ensure that Cork ETB can work with the Department and all the other stakeholders to ensure the tendering process that is necessary to deliver these two vital projects to completion happens post-haste, in other words, that it happens immediately, so we can reach the milestones set down under the previous school capital programme. At the end of the day, this is about delivering education for hundreds of students in our local area, and we want to ensure they get the best possible chance to be able to do this and that it is done in a timely fashion.

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